


Hindsight

by xXScreenSaverXx



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Post-EriSolSprite, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Sollux and Aradia are Moirails, apparently, aradias barely in it but she's still important, erisol? in the year of our lord 2019?, it has a happy ending tho, sollux just misses eridan, that it thats the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 04:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20285590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXScreenSaverXx/pseuds/xXScreenSaverXx
Summary: As you quickly found out, the only thing worse than being a lime green spritely abomination with an unbearably pompous asshole is /not/ being a lime green spritely abomination with an unbearably pompous asshole.Or: Post-Erisolsprite, Sollux finds himself missing Eridan like a limb, and deals with it very poorly.





	Hindsight

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know where this came from, i just know that i love these two.

You don’t remember much of your time as Erisolsprite. Everything about it gives you a migraine whenever you dwell to hard on it, and provides sharp spikes of _pain, fear, disgust_ whenever a memory pops up, unbidden. But even so – the loss hits you hard, and doesn’t stop. Your mind is too empty – a feeling that, not too long ago, you would have killed for. But it is empty, and each thought echoes back to you, unchanged.

You remember the feeling of _wrongness_, itching like bees under your skin every time you glanced down at a too long arm or ran your hands through too curly hair. But now, alone in your hive, the game won and over, your arms are too short, too thin, with nowhere near enough rings adorning the fingers. Your hair, shorn back into something resembling a messy buzzcut, makes you want to _scream_, fingernails digging into your scalp as you reach back to play with hair that no longer exists.

The first time that you called Karkat ‘Kar’ is burned into your brain. The look of confusion on his face, followed by that sickening, overwhelming _pity,_ was enough to send you running, sprinting from his hive and pushing you far, far away, until the air washing over your face as you flew washed away the panic, the panic, the _panic_.

You’ve never been able to cope with this whole emotions deal well. So, you do what you’ve always done, Earth C or not: you throw yourself into your work, substituting food and sleep for your code and your bees, each new line on the screen bringing you just a little step more towards peace. You promptly deleted the whole damn thing once you’d realised how you’d substituted all your w’s for wv’s, and that nothing would even begin to run.

The one thing that you can say for the situation is that your lisp is gone, only, you’d never minded it that much. Now you only feel more like a stranger in your body, slurring your words and knocking off the g’s until you’re almost certain that you’re possessed by something that only wants to ruin your life. Not that it’s been much of a life, recently. Aside from the stilted, one-sided pep talks from KK (_Kar_, your brain insists) and the few times you’ve half-heartedly picked at conversation with Aradia, you’ve avoided everyone and everything like the plague. To be fair, you had tried once to attend one of the sessions set up by Jade to discuss the future of the group and Earth C, just once. The entire time you had been scanning the crowd, subconsciously looking for, begging for, a flash of purple, a cape, a snooty, holier-than-thou sneer, _anything_. You were left sorely disappointed.

(You’d happily ignored FF’s (_Fef’s_, your brain insisted again) messages, your stomach churning and a lump forming in your throat, bombarded by an endless sea of _regret, affection, pain, pain, pain_.)

KK told you to get over it, already. AA smiled gently, patting your hand sympathetically and asking, _‘Why don’t you go see him?’_. You had scoffed, shooting off a couple of insults before storming off. The truth is, you can’t go to see him. Heck, you can’t even think his name half of the time. Because, hold the applause please – you, the unbeatable Sollux Captor… are terrified out of your empty, echoing mind.

So, instead of biting the bullet, you lie on the floor of your hive, hugging your arms to your sides, pretending that they’re longer, pretending that they have those pointless, flamboyant rings attached to the fingers, pretending that everything is fine (everything is not fine).

AA is what finally pushes you into it. You’ve refused to even talk to _him_, but at the same time, you’re almost positive that nobody else has bothered checking to see how he’s doing. So, like any good – friend? Rival? – person, you go running to your moirail, and practically beg her to check up on him. She smiles kindly, and promptly does so, and keeps on doing it. You were right, she was the first person to talk to him in the long period that you’ve all been on Earth C. Your heart sinks lower than it ever has before at that news. Somehow, you think you hate yourself even more than you did when you were Erisolsprite.

To put it as you’re sure DS would: Well, the updates keep coming and they don’t stop coming. AA talks to ED almost constantly, filling you in on how he’s been spending his time, how he’s feeling, who he’s talking to (it’s still nobody but her). If you weren’t so worried about him, and so scared to acknowledge that, you might have felt a little jealous of how occupied she is with him. But you’re not, and the way that she smiles whenever her husktop _pings_ just fills you with warmth, and happiness, even if it is temporary.

You don’t have a firm grasp on human timeframes yet, but you’d guess that you broke about 7 months after you all arrived on Earth C. One minute, you were messaging KK (_Kar!)_, until he confirmed that, no, he hadn’t talked to ED yet, and you felt something deep inside of you snap. It took you seconds to sprint out of your hive and to propel yourself high, high into the sky, zooming on to your destination, mind whirling. You arrive at his shipwreck hive and hammer on the door, almost blinded in the way that your thoughts cloud your vision.

Then, he opens the door, and after almost a year of loneliness, you remember how to breathe again.

He looks at you with wide eyes that reflect your own relief, mouth slightly opened in silent question, but forgoes it in favour of slamming into you, pulling you close in a desperate hug. In the past, you almost certainly would have tried to tear this throat out. Now, however, you can only wrap your arms around his shaking frame, pressing in close, closer, burying your head into his neck, a strangled sob forcing its way from your lips.

He looks at you, still worried, still questioning. Once upon a time, you hated him. But now all that’s left is pure, unfiltered pity, hitting you like a tidal wave, threatening to drown you in his lavender eyes. You can recall a lot of what being Erisolsprite was like, now. It comes crashing back in one swift, quick motion, and you remember loneliness, compassion, his rage at seeing you with Fef (not FF, not anymore). More than that, you remember him, the Eridan that liked to wear ballgowns because they looked good, that could fight wild lusii ten times his size without flinching, and that knew more random historical facts than ever should have been possible.

You do the only thing that you can do: you melt into his touch, savouring the sensation of his arms around you, the warmth that seeped from his body into your bones. You smile a small, soft smile.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, trying to convey just how much remorse you have how much you’ve missed him, just how close to tearing yourself apart you’ve come while he’s been gone –

His eyes soften, and his grip tightens. You figure that he’s gotten the message when his fins by your head flutter and his sharp fingernails drag you in so close that they almost seem to break the skin.

You hated being Erisolsprite, sure. But you could never live without Eridan, not happily. So if you couldn’t go back to being the same person, you’d more than happily settle for being his, in every way you could. From the look in his eyes and the soft smile on his face, you figure that he feels the same.


End file.
